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No existen democracias sin algún tipo de polarización, lo que no es en sí mismo nocivo ni patológico. En realidad, las instituciones democráticas están diseñadas para canalizar el disenso, permitir la competencia pacífica entre grupos y partidos, y procesar las diferencias entre mayorías y minorías. Una dosis de polarización puede ser consustancial a la vida en una sociedad pluralista.

La intensidad de la polarización difiere dependiendo del tema y de la influencia de quien difunde mensajes divisivos. No es lo mismo la polarización que genera la inauguración del nuevo aeropuerto metropolitano, que el clivaje que trae consigo el tema del aborto, cuya explicación tiene cortes histórico-sociales más profundos.

Cuando en México se usa el término polarización, éste nos remite a diferentes entendimientos: polarizaciones nuevas y antiguas, las saludables para el debate cívico, las destructivas, las estructurales y las de coyuntura. También se habla de la polarización basada en valores, la que produce la desinformación, la polarización online y offline.

Por consiguiente, conviene precisar el tipo de distanciamiento social que afecta los cimientos de la convivencia democrática en el país. Me refiero a la hiperpolarización que se observa en redes sociales y plataformas digitales, caracterizada por descalificaciones de todo tipo, resentimiento, discursos de odio, post-verdad e incitaciones a la violencia. De acuerdo con Luis Porto, con este tipo de encono, “se transforma la política no en lucha de ideas sino en lucha de afectos, de emociones de atracción y repulsión: ellos contra nosotros. Se pierde la identidad colectiva común y se produce una polarización identitaria”.^[1]Porto, Luis, “La necesidad de reducir la polarización política: ¿nuevo contrato social o consensos en políticas específicas?”, Op Ed. 19 de diciembre de 2022, … Continue reading Lo alarmante de este fenómeno es que actores o grupos de poder promueven abiertamente la polarización, utilizándola como estrategia para impulsar intereses políticos, notoriamente, en contextos electorales.

Pongamos como ejemplo el accidente ocurrido en el Metro de la Ciudad de México en enero de 2023, que resultó en la trágica pérdida de una vida humana y varias personas heridas.^[2]Un antecedente cercano fue la caída de un tren de las vías elevadas de la Línea 12 del Metro en mayo de 2021, que ocasionó 26 víctimas mortales y más de una centena de heridos. Los peritajes … Continue reading Aun cuando las evidencias sugieren fallas en el mantenimiento de las vías y de los trenes como la causa del percance, las autoridades capitalinas hablaron de “sospechas de actos malintencionados” y posible sabotaje, insinuando, sin mayor fundamento, un ataque deliberado para afectar la imagen de la actual Jefa de Gobierno y aspirante a la presidencia de la república. De inmediato, se anunció la movilización de 6 mil elementos militares de la Guardia Nacional para resguardar las instalaciones del Metro, una medida ampliamente cuestionada por gran parte de la ciudadanía de la capital. El tema en redes sociales adquirió la forma de un enfrentamiento entre los seguidores del partido en el gobierno y sus opositores, desplazando la discusión sobre las ineficiencias del sistema de transporte y la impartición de justicia para las víctimas. Al convertirse el Estado en un agente activo de polarización, se incrementa la desconfianza y la incapacidad para debatir soluciones a los problemas desde el interés colectivo.

Este tipo de polarización, que erosiona la democracia y promueve la segregación, se alimenta de la competencia entre versiones opuestas de la realidad, en la que difieren ya no solo las opiniones, sino los mismos hechos, y en la que cada persona refuerza sus creencias en cámaras de eco, acudiendo a fuentes de datos ad hoc y a informaciones distorsionadas por la competencia político-electoral.

En este contexto, debemos cuestionarnos ¿cómo hacer para acrecentar la búsqueda de la verdad y disminuir la necesidad de caos, odio y agresión que caracteriza la polarización? Un posible camino es promover ejercicios de democracia deliberativa, que permitan encontrar espacios y puntos de coincidencia, esos acuerdos básicos que refuerzan la fe en la democracia y en la solución pacífica de los conflictos. Espacios que acerquen a la comunidad, a la juventud, a sectores trabajadores y a grupos en situación de vulnerabilidad, en una lógica de diálogo y búsqueda de soluciones a desafíos concretos. La gente se vuelve menos polarizada conforme se discuten problemas locales y no controversias identitarias.

Como muestran los ejercicios del profesor James S. Fishkin, Director del Centro para la Democracia Deliberativa de la Universidad de Stanford, el mero intercambio de ideas entre personas que piensan distinto reduce la animosidad y puede acercar las posturas extremas. Es necesario tender puentes entre los polos e incentivar, no reprimir, a quien descubra mediante el diálogo que las personas que no piensan igual pueden tener buenas razones para ello.

Uno de los grandes desafíos de la democracia mexicana es que el desacuerdo se vive como enemistad. Los rivales son vistos como contrincantes que no merecen tener voz, a quienes hay que aplastar junto con sus ideas divergentes. De ahí la importancia de lograr que la gente acepte la necesidad de coexistir. Hace falta lograr ese entendimiento elemental sobre los hechos y las verdades, un fundamento que nos permita conversar sobre nuestros retos con base en intereses comunes.

Debatir es reconocer el desacuerdo y respetarlo, construir sobre él, encontrar las concurrencias sin obsesionarse con los puntos de división. De ese material se compone una ciudadanía democrática, un tejido que no pueden construir los gobiernos por sí solos, ni las instituciones electorales. Se requiere la participación del sistema educativo, de las empresas, de los medios de comunicación, de las familias. Y ese diálogo empieza por impulsar una escucha inclusiva. Tal como señaló la ex primera ministra de Nueva Zelandia, Jacinda Ardern, es importante que la gente se sienta escuchada, aunque el resultado del proceso no le favorezca al final. De esa manera podremos superar el discurso divisionista que solo beneficia los intereses de algunos.

The post Carta de la Ciudad de México<span class="colon">:</span> ¿Puede la polarización construir democracia? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

What are the obstacles and opportunities facing democracy today? Zócalo is publishing a series of letters to highlight how the world’s democratic ideals are faring in practice. From Mexico: Public policy expert Javier Gonzalez explores how the country might use its rampant polarization to build better dialogue.

This series is presented in tandem with Thursday’s Zócalo event in Mexico City—“Are Elected Presidents Bad for Democracy?,” presented in partnership with Democracy International and Metropolitan Autonomous University for the Global Forum for Modern Direct Democracy 2023.

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What does polarization mean, here in Mexico?

There are no democracies without some kind of polarization, which is not in itself harmful or pathological. Democratic institutions are designed to channel dissent, allow peaceful competition between groups and parties, and process differences between majorities and minorities. A dose of polarization can be essential to life in a pluralistic society.

The intensity of the polarization differs depending on the issue and the influence of who spreads divisive messages. The polarization generated by the inauguration of the new metropolitan airport to serve Mexico City is not the same as the cleavage that the issue of abortion brings with it.

When polarization is mentioned in Mexico, it refers to different understandings of the term: new and old polarizations, healthy ones for civic debate, destructive ones, structural ones. There is also talk of polarization based on values, polarization produced by disinformation, and polarization both online and offline.

So, let’s specify that when we talk about the type of social distancing that affects the foundations of democratic coexistence in the country, we are talking about hyperpolarization. This is the severe polarization observed on social networks and digital platforms, and usually characterized by resentment, hate speech, post-truth, and incitement to violence.

With this type of anger, writes the Uruguayan economist and writer Luis Porto of the Organization of American States, “Politics is transformed not into a struggle of ideas but into a struggle of affections, of emotions of attraction and repulsion: them against us. The common collective identity is lost and identity polarization is produced.”

What is alarming about this phenomenon is that powerful actors or groups openly promote polarization, using it as a strategy to foster political interests, notably in electoral contexts.

Take the train collision that occurred in the Mexico City Metro in January 2023, which resulted in the tragic loss of a human life, and dozens of people injured. Even when the evidence suggests failures in train and track maintenance as the cause of the accident, capital authorities spoke of “suspicions of malicious acts” and possible sabotage. Thus, they insinuated, without further foundation, that the accident was a deliberate attack to affect the image of the current head of government in Mexico City, who is considered a likely candidate for the Mexican presidency.

Immediately, officials announced the mobilization of 6,000 members of the National Guard to protect the Metro facilities, a measure widely questioned by many of the capital’s citizens. On social networks the issue took the form of a confrontation between supporters of the ruling party and its opponents, displacing discussions about the inefficiencies of the transportation system and the administration of justice for the victims. When the state becomes an active agent of polarization, it increases mistrust and makes it impossible to debate solutions in a meaningful way.

This type of polarization, which erodes democracy and promotes segregation, feeds on the competition between opposing versions of reality. In echo chambers, each person reinforces their beliefs, resorting to ad hoc data sources and information distorted by political-electoral competition.

In this context, we must ask ourselves how to increase the search for truth and reduce the need for chaos, hatred, and aggression that characterizes polarization. One possible path is to promote exercises in deliberative democracy, which make it possible to find points of agreement that can reinforce faith in democracy and in the peaceful solution of conflicts. A related path is to build creative spaces that bring together communities, youth, workers, and groups in vulnerable situations. When people in such spaces apply the logic of dialogue and search for solutions to specific challenges, often in local contexts, they become less polarized.

As the exercises of Professor James S. Fishkin, director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, have shown, the mere exchange of ideas between people who think differently reduces animosity and can bring extreme positions closer together. America In One Room was one of such exercises of deliberation as a remedy to depolarize highly divided environments.

It is necessary to build bridges between the poles and encourage, not repress, those who discover through dialogue that people who do not think alike may have good reasons for it.

One of the great challenges of Mexican democracy is that citizens experience disagreement as enmity. Rivals are seen as voiceless opponents, who must be crushed along with their divergent ideas. Hence the importance of getting people to accept the need to coexist. On such a foundation, it should be possible to build basic understandings that allow us to talk about our challenges based on our common interests.

Debating is acknowledging disagreement and respecting it, building on it, and finding communal ground instead of obsessing over dividing points. A democratic citizenship is made up of this material, a fabric that cannot be built by governments alone, nor by electoral institutions. The participation of the educational system, companies, the media, and families is required. And that dialogue begins by promoting inclusive listening.

As former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has pointed out, it is important that people feel heard, even if the outcome of the process does not go their way in the end. That way we can overcome the divisive discourse that only benefits the interests of some.

The post A Letter from Mexico City<span class="colon">:</span> Can Polarization Build Democracy? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Sir Keith might not be a household name outside his native Britain. But his apt phrase neatly justifies how much societies around the world today need more democracy—and more citizen engagement.

When democracies limit citizen participation to voting for political parties, we can blame our misfortunes on the politicians. Under such circumstances, we easily fall prey to demagogues who promise the earth, but who merely are in it for themselves. What we need is a system of “responsible” government, and this means that we have to take responsibility ourselves.

Direct democracy offers a number of ways to make us more responsible. First, there is the citizens’ initiative, a practice in democracies including Taiwan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Uruguay. In Uruguay, if 25 percent of the electorate propose a piece of legislation (by signing a petition), the entire electorate must vote on it in referendum.

In 1994, Uruguayan citizens gathered enough signatures for a popular vote on whether to protect old-age pensions. A majority supported the proposition; it seemed a balanced choice and one that the country could afford. In making this choice, a majority of the citizens of Uruguay opted for social justice, and as they had in a 1992 vote on a plan for privatization, defied the neoliberal political establishment.

So was there a liberal bias? Did Uruguayan voters default to supporting policies of the left? Not uniformly. Indeed, in the same year, when the nation’s teachers’ union sought to guarantee the allocation of 27 percent of the state budget to education, the vast majority voted “no.” Not, it should be said, because the voters were opposed to good education. Rather, the voters rejected the measure because the proposition was too blunt and lacked nuance. Also, on balance, setting a fixed percentage was not a prudent way to budget. The debate over the education measure became a practical exercise in responsibility. The citizens weighed the alternatives and decided after careful deliberation.

What is interesting about the Uruguayan example is that both votes were initiated by the people. In this way, it is different than the top-down referendums in many countries. Unlike California, for example, countries like Switzerland, Italy, and Uruguay do not allowed paid petition gatherers. Hence, the initiative process is truly bottom-up and less likely to be captured by those with the deepest pockets.

Too often, politicians hold referendums when they themselves are in a tight spot. As the economist John Matsusaka has written, governments often rely on referendums for issues that are “too hot to handle.” In the late 1990s, British Prime Minister Tony Blair held a referendum on a parliament for Scotland in order not to alienate voters in England, and in 2005, the French government submitted the European Constitution to voters for fear of upsetting the large segment of French voters who were skeptical of the EU.

This process of elected politicians submitting unpopular questions to voters is not direct democracy. It is an abuse thereof. And it is entirely out of step with the current moment and how people want to engage with the world. By contrast, over the past three decades, some local and national governments have taken a much more proactive approach to citizen engagement through participatory budgeting.

The idea is simple: the government distributes a percentage (typically 10 percent) of the local budget to the citizens, who decide what to spend the money on. “How would you spend one million of the City’s money?” asked a pamphlet distributed to New Yorkers in 2011 that introduced them to the process.

Participatory budgeting came to Tower Hamlets, one of the most unequal parts of London, in 2009 and 2010 in a project designed to help the area choose new social service providers. The borough was divided into eight smaller areas; in each, a representative section of community volunteers could question the providers on whatever they wished, including social responsibility and commitment to the community. Eventually, the citizens were able to negotiate with providers on the details of how service would work.

Finally, after this process, a vote was taken on which providers offered the best value and which were most likely to provide employment to local residents. This participatory project was a success. An evaluation by the local government association concluded that “a majority of participants said they had developed skills linked to empowerment, and the community overall felt they could better influence their local environment and services.” It was popular, too. More than 77 percent wanted the council to repeat the event in the future.” This level of engagement was considerably above the average for similar boroughs, where as few as 20 percent of residents even bother to vote.

The Tower Hamlets experiment—as well as participatory budgeting in places as different as Porto Alegre, Brazil and Paris, France—shows that citizens behave responsibly when they are given responsibility.

The money allocated in participatory budgeting is finite, and those involved in the process know that they have to make hard choices. Admittedly “trust” is a difficult concept to measure, but research by the World Bank suggests that citizen engagement grows trust in the political system. Moreover, citizens learn democracy by doing it. As Harvard political scientist Jane Mansbridge wrote, “Participating in democratic decisions makes many participants better citizens.”

Given the opportunity to make choices—and difficult ones at that—everyday people learn that politics is not a simple business. This realization lessens the allure of those who erroneously claim to offer simple solutions. The proof, as always, is in the pudding of facts. What is interesting is that populist parties have been less successful in countries that have experimented with deliberative mechanisms. Thus, in Ireland, there is no far-right populist party. The same is true for Brazil, where reports on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre suggest that citizens who engaged in the process become more interested in the policy issues and less concerned about the tribal politics.

This realization is also a defense against those who would use plebiscites, ballot measures, or other campaigns to threaten minorities or immigrants. Stronger citizen decision-making, if well designed, can de-escalate divisive issues, and also keep debate civil and respectful.

Ireland offers one example of direct democracy protecting human rights. For decades, the European island nation was a conservative bastion that outlawed abortion and even limited the right to divorce. Politics was often polarized as right-wing parties competed to be more conservative than each other.

This changed when, in 2012, the government accepted the use of citizens’ juries (or citizens’ assemblies), in which everyday people gather, study an issue, and make a recommendation to parliament as to how to proceed. Soon, Irish politicians, seeking to end division, agreed that such groups of ordinary citizens would handle any proposed legislation on same-sex marriage and abortion.

The citizens’ assembly on abortion met in 2016. Because making sound decisions is about information, and weighing the pros and cons, the group got the same access to expert briefings as elected officials, and to suggestions submitted by other Irish citizens. The organizers of the citizens’ assemblies also invited advocacy groups ranging from the Catholic Church to LGBTQ+ organizations to offer input.

After deliberating, the citizens’ assembly proposed allowing abortion in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. This fell well short of what various feminist groups wanted but was also far more liberal than the existing prohibition, which made it a criminal offense to travel abroad to terminate a pregnancy. This compromise position was endorsed by just over 60 percent of the assembly, and subsequently ratified in a referendum by a similar majority of Irish voters.

The use of the citizens’ assembly was welcomed by both sides of the argument. Even senior Church clerics expressed support for the process of deliberative listening. “Concepts, in and of themselves, rarely move people emotionally. Relationships and stories, however, do move people,” Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson said in a statement, noting that the referendum was decided after “the telling of and the listening to stories ‘on both sides.’” Independent evaluations of the citizens’ juries concluded that participants took their duties seriously and used their powers responsibly. Participants told evaluators and the press that they themselves had to live with the consequences of their actions.

Previously, Irish voters could blame politicians for their unhappiness with social policy—even if they had voted for the officials. Now that citizens had to make recommendations themselves, people’s stances became more nuanced, and they became more open to a plurality of arguments.

Society needs shifts like this now more than ever, both to escape our polarized politics and to capitalize on the way we live today. Just as out-of-print books can be printed “on-demand” if customers wish, democracy should be upgraded to reflect the wishes of the voters. In the age of Netflix and Spotify, people demand the ability to select individual playlists and policies. We are no longer content with the package deals offered by political parties. Majorities in all democratic countries want more decision-making power and deserve democracy on demand.

Almost 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville concluded, “the most potent, and possibly the only remaining weapon to involve men in the destiny of their country is to make them share in its government.” Apart from upgrading the antiquated gendered language, this conclusion still holds true.

The post The Secret to Making Democracy More Civil and Less Polarized appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But, according to three scholars who spoke to a large crowd at Cross Campus DTLA, if you talk to Americans themselves, a more nuanced answer emerges.

We think we can predict someone’s point of view on social issues like marijuana legalization, gay rights, and free speech based on their political party, but in fact “in response to social questions you often see a higher level of in-group diversity than you’d expect,” said UCLA Anderson economist Romain Wacziarg.

University of Arizona political scientist Samara Klar concurred. “The vast majority of both Democrats and Republicans identify as moderates,” she said. In fact, they are happy to spend time with people from the opposing party. The only caveat: as long as those people aren’t interested in talking about politics.

But, asked the evening’s moderator, KCRW “Press Play” host Madeleine Brand, aren’t people more engaged now than they were before our most recent presidential election?

Klar said that while there has been an increase in grassroots activism, people aren’t talking and arguing more about politics with friends than they did previously.

That is borne out by the research of UCLA Anderson behavioral economist M. Keith Chen. By tracking the locations of people’s smartphones, he studied the length of Thanksgiving dinners in 2015 and in 2016, just two weeks after the election. On average, the dinners of families with split political beliefs were 47 minutes shorter in 2016 than 2015. That number was higher in markets that had been inundated with political advertising. “At least in these salient moments, politics can have a very corrosive effect, especially on things you wouldn’t have thought, like family relationships,” he said.

But Klar maintained that more people are moderates than we think. For decades, researchers have asked Americans how they would feel if their son or daughter planned to marry someone from the other political party. “We found people would rather have their child marry someone from the out-party who never talks about politics than someone who talks about politics all the time from the same party,” she said.

Wacziarg said that what we perceive to be growing polarization is in fact people refusing to participate in the existing animosity. “There is a big chunk of people that don’t want to basically become part of the polarized debate,” he said.

Are we polarizing in other areas, then? Brand asked the panelists about the gender divide, and about the blue coasts versus the flyover red states.

Wacziarg researches divides in 11 areas, including income level and geography, and finds that “gender is the one where you can least predict someone’s values on social issues,” he said. The most predictive has traditionally been education level, and political party and religion are rising. But all of these differences “only explain a small fraction in the variation of what people actually believe,” he said. He added that even the red states versus blue states divide is “just not very big” when it comes to many questions, including free speech. It’s the divisive questions that make headlines. “It’s not interesting to report that everyone agrees that a communist should be able to give a speech in public,” he said.

But even if most citizens are more in agreement than we think, politicians are espousing more polarized views than ever. “Congresspeople themselves tend to vastly overestimate how ideological their constituents are. The media aren’t fabricating polarization for ratings,” Klar said. “The media are reporting on the polarization in Congress.” In our everyday lives, we get along with people from both sides of the divide, but we’re electing Democrats who are much more liberal than they used to be and Republicans who are much more conservative than they used to be.

So why are we electing them?

“It comes down to money,” said Klar.

Wacziarg also pointed to gerrymandering and the primary system as reasons why more polarized candidates are more likely to get elected.

“All of the evidence suggests Americans are less polarized than we think when it comes to beliefs,” said Chen. “For some reason in this one action, voting … we are more polarized than we’ve been for the last 50 years.” That holds true even for non-gerrymandered areas. It’s not just because we’re sorting ourselves with people like us; people don’t move houses quickly enough for that to occur. “It suggests that maybe the political parties themselves, the candidates themselves, are getting better at sorting out exactly how to match the people they’re appealing to, their local voters. And parties are getting better at that,” he said.

Brand asked if perhaps the fracturing of the media has contributed to voting polarization.

Chen pointed to research he has done on “hurricane trutherism”: for people in states like Florida and the Carolinas, “whether or not you believe hurricanes are relatively severe has become a partisan issue.” In 2017, with Hurricane Irma looming and Florida under evacuation orders, Rush Limbaugh predicted that it wasn’t going to hit the state. Subsequently, there was an 11-point wedge between Republicans and Democrats in their willingness to evacuate.

How did climate change become polarized?

Belief in conspiracy theories breaks down along party lines, said Klar, with one notable bipartisan exception: the anti-vaccine movement.

Wacziarg also pointed to the rise of populism and a general distrust in “elite opinion.” When it comes to climate change, “the solutions are very technocratic and require a very top-down political decision driven by scientists. It’s the typical kind of issue against which you’d have populist backlash,” he said.

Wacziarg and Chen agreed that right-wing populism is growing around the world in a manner that seems unprecedented. But Klar pointed out that in the 2016 election, only 30 percent of Americans supported President Donald Trump. “I’m not sure if we can say we’re in a populist trend right now,” she said, adding that 30,000 voters could have elected the first woman president on Barack Obama’s heels.

Brand asked how much technology and isolation are contributing to polarization, or at least to people choosing not to participate in civic life.

“All of us have a feeling that you can no longer be on Twitter if you don’t want to think about politics,” said Chen.

Yet “most people are not posting political content,” said Klar. “Most people are just there to read.” She said that only 3 percent of Facebook users post their ideological information on their profiles.

Wacziarg said the role of social media in polarization is inconclusive, but that cable news has been a much more divisive force.

Is that division all bad? It often leads to policy gridlock, said Wacziarg, which might be better than either extreme gaining more power.

The most damaging part of polarization, said Chen, is when the party that has come to power governs only for the people who put them in power. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen recently in Turkey, India, and Brazil, and it’s degrading. “I think of that as one of the most worrying trends,” he said.

In the question-and-answer session, audience members asked about the effects of recent phenomena on our divisions.

Are we frustrated with a system rife with inequalities, and taking it out on each other?

“I think a lot of frustration has to do with the structure of the political system,” said Klar, and how people feel about “the elites themselves.”

The post Your Vote Is More Polarized Than You Are appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But why aren’t moderate viewpoints more prominent among the forms of mass communication to which the largely moderate public contributes—namely social media sites like Facebook? And is there anything that can be done to make such platforms more inviting places for the exchange of less extreme opinions?

The absence of moderate voices—an empirical reality confirmed by research reflects a much larger problem about the politically polarizing effects of using social media. These sites have radically changed how people communicate with each other about politics. In particular, Facebook interlaces political content into a broader web of information about the lives and values of users.

This radical change to the way that people express their political identities, access information, and communicate with each other fosters the development of increasingly negative feelings toward people who hold different political opinions. Scrolling through the Facebook news feed triggers a cascade of processes that result in negative attitudes about those who disagree with us politically.

Inherent features of Facebook, paired with the norms of how people use the site, heighten awareness of political identity. My research shows that a multitude of nonpolitical information—such as where we eat, where we shop, and our favorite music—can send signals about our political views. Once we’ve recognized someone as a member of our out-group—a group outside our own—we make biased inferences about their political views. Facebook users judge other users with whom they disagree to be less politically knowledgeable and to use less reliable news sources.

Altering who participates in the online public sphere is not just a question of civility for civility’s sake. The absence of moderate voices contributes to the distorted view that most Americans have of public opinion. Americans believe they are more polarized and divided than they actually are, and that belief may discourage people from believing that compromises can be found for our toughest policies.

How can this situation be remedied? Both the public and the companies running these platforms have roles to play. The most successful solutions involve tweaking platforms to highlight the perspective of users who are part of the solution to polarization, and not part of the problem.

Of course, this answer oversimplifies things. Reasonable people might disagree about whether social media companies should alter their algorithms to favor particular kinds of communication, not just to maximize user engagement. Clandestine changes to the algorithm would likely cause a backlash over fears that a corporation was attempting to police the public sphere.

But Facebook might avoid this outcry if it were to introduce the feature change with great fanfare about wanting to make political communication more civil. It also could try to change the behavior of individual users, but this is harder than you might think.

The good news is that, while moderation is missing in our media, that’s not because of the extinction of moderates themselves. Despite the popular narrative about the extent of political discord in our country, social science research shows more consensus and temperance than you’d expect in what Americans actually believe regarding hot button issues. Moderates do in fact exist in large numbers in our country.

The trouble is that moderation tends to go hand in hand with lower levels of interest in politics. Many people identify as independents or as ideologically moderate because they don’t know enough about policy issues to form stronger opinions, let alone articulate them. Thus, on average, middle-of-the-roaders are less interested and less knowledgeable about politics.

Moderate voices are not only quiet on Facebook; they appear to be silenced everywhere. Research suggests that many people find political discussions uncomfortable and that people worry about the damage to their social relationships if they engage about politics. Those with less confidence in the accuracy of their viewpoints are more sensitive to being wrong, and they may be hesitant to speak up because they don’t want to be critiqued publicly for their opinion. Add to this the vitriolic norms of social media, and it’s no surprise that, according to the Pew Research Center, majorities of users on social media sites find political interactions stressful and frustrating.

Thus, what won’t work is asking or incentivizing moderates to speak up more about their political opinions. As a group, they are less inclined to do so, and even if they did, it is not clear that their fellow users would recognize the subtleties of their opinions. One disturbing finding from my research is that the Facebook platform is well-designed to foster the out-group homogeneity effect. That term refers to how the very act of identifying others as members of an out-group increases our propensity to think that they are all the same. In other words, people are inclined to attribute too much extremism and consistency to the political views of their opponents, attributing strong political identities and viewpoints to those people even though they don’t actually hold those beliefs.

So the solution to moderating the polarizing forces of social media starts with staying away from politics, at least on the surface.

Interestingly, Facebook users are usually accurate in inferring the political identities of other users based on even the nonpolitical content they post. This mapping of nonpolitical cues to political identities reinforces the idea of a large gulf between political parties.

But, in reality, not everyone who drives a Prius is a Democrat, nor do all pickup truck drivers identify as Republicans. So, to alter the polarizing effects of social media, we need to make the signals linking social characteristics and policy preferences noisier. Kale-eating conservatives and country music-loving liberals must speak up and share more about their lives in order to highlight the full range of diversity within each political party. Having partisans complicate their own stories could contribute to a reduction in the perception of social polarization between those with different political viewpoints.

Moderates have an equally important role to play, a role that does not force them out of their political comfort zones. Moderates often demonstrate tolerance for differing viewpoints in what they read, like, and comment upon. Social media companies need to alter their platforms in ways that reward and create incentives for these users who play nicely in the sandbox.

For example, Facebook could alter the news feed algorithm to lower relevancy scores for emotional political speech, ensuring that dispassionate communication is more likely to circulate on the site. Worried about fake news? Research suggests that those without a strong partisan attachment are more discerning about the quality of their news. Thus, the news that moderates flag as questionable may be more likely to be motivated by genuine concern about the content as opposed to partisan strategizing to antagonize the other side.

Another solution stems from the finding that the people most inclined to “like” content posted by people in the opposing political party are frequent Facebook users who are the least partisan and politically interested. We could harness the judgment of these tolerant moderates by altering the news feed algorithm to assign a higher relevancy score to political content that these users like. This might be particularly useful because users with moderate opinions who do not frequently post political content are more likely to be situated in networks with a diversity of political opinions. These users could serve as a bridge to help partisans break out of their filter bubbles.

The problem of polarization on Facebook is multifaceted, and no single solution operating in isolation will remedy the root of the issue. While some of the causes of polarization on social media are best left to governments (such as eliminating foreign interference in elections) or to private companies (such as extirpating hate speech from the sites), we shouldn’t abdicate our own responsibility as citizens to contribute to fixing the problem.

The post Why Facebook Makes Americans Feel Politically Polarized appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Todorov’s work is diverse and difficult to pigeonhole. He spent his first 24 years in communist Bulgaria, then relaunched himself as a student of structuralism and semiotics in France. In the early 1970s, he established his reputation with his work on the “fantastic” in literature. By this term, Todorov meant that moment of hesitation that readers of, say, Edgar Allen Poe, experience when confronted with the supernatural—a moment during which we are transfixed between belief and disbelief. (A moment that many Americans are now experiencing as they follow the news from Washington.) He soon tired of a theoretical formalism that ignored the human beings who spoke the words and built the structures his colleagues were busy dissecting.

So in the 1980s, he turned to the study of ideas and the ways in which they shaped individuals who, in turn, reshaped them. As a historian, he explored the lives of both perpetrators and prisoners in Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps, as well as those of resisters and collaborators in Vichy France. Todorov insisted that, even in extreme situations, men and women have been able to act as moral agents. In his brilliant study of the concentration camps, Facing the Extreme, Todorov suggests that Hannah Arendt’s controversial claim concerning evil can be stood on its head: “We can speak of—and take heart in—the banality of good.”

Todorov never felt at ease with the moniker “historian.” If pressed, he allowed that he did practice a particular kind of history, one that tried to draw from past events their “moral sense.” In other words, Todorov wanted to know how past events might cast light on our present predicaments. This is why, he explained, he was attracted to complex and confused historical events: “For every affirmation I want to ask myself why the contrary is not entirely false.” His rejection of Manichaeism, of an absolute opposition between two forces, was “the principal message I wish to convey to my readers,” he explained in a book-length interview with Catherine Portevin. For Todorov, it is both the refusal of stark oppositions and the refusal to surrender our humanist heritage that remind us of the importance of political moderation.

Today, the world doesn’t have much love for the middle way. For many of us, moderation means an absence of commitment, a lack of intensity and a failure to engage. Moderation is our kindly but clueless cousin who, when the food begins to fly across the Thanksgiving Day table, keeps repeating: “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.” To make the moderate’s day even more melancholy, her worldview does not easily lend itself to theory. Most often, it seems less a political position than a personal disposition.

Todorov was well aware of the moderate’s predicament. He liked to quote one of his favorite thinkers, the Baron de Montesquieu, the 18th century author of Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws. The moderate, Montesquieu quipped, found himself in the same position of someone living on the second floor of a building, besieged by the noise being made on the floor above and the smoke coming from the floor below. From Montesquieu, Todorov draws a paradox: The defense of moderation requires, if necessary, immoderation. Maintaining the middle position, he argued, has nothing to do with indecision. To the contrary, “political moderation entails the defense of pluralism and the freedom of choice. This defense must be unbending and serve as a counterforce against all forms of extremism.”

Without moderation, all other values would wither and die. Immoderation in friendship would shut out others, while excessiveness in benevolence would shut down our critical faculties. For this reason, moderation finds itself in the odd position of becoming an absolute value.

For Todorov, moderation pulses at the core of Montesquieu’s famous analysis of the balance of powers: “The only thing that can legitimate an instance of power is, paradoxically, its partial abandonment: legitimacy can be acquired … by the fact that the holder of power has consented to share it with others, to impose limits on himself.” Whether the conflicting parties share other values, or whether the regime in which they scramble for power is republican or aristocratic, is ultimately unimportant—as long as they agree on the imperative to share power. This, for Todorov, is simply another word for moderation. And, perhaps, another word for trust: Moderation can only be maintained by a mutual recognition of a shared responsibility for the well-being of a community.

But it is with Montesquieu’s epistolary novel, Persian Letters, that Todorov discovers the method to achieve moderation, not just for regimes but also for readers. In his tale of two Persian visitors to Paris, Montesquieu leads his French readers to see their country and customs, their lives and laws, from a foreigner’s perspective. In a famous scene a Persian visitor goes to the opera and regards the box seats, and not the stage, as the focus of activity. Montesquieu reveals the provinciality not of the Persians, but of the Parisians who assume that their way is the only way of seeing.

In effect, what Montesquieu gives his readers is what life gave Todorov: dépaysement, or disorientation. Having left his family in Bulgaria and lived as an exile in France, Todorov became a fan of this disorientation. While painful, the experience was also a privilege.

In a series of autobiographical vignettes titled, appropriately enough, “L’Homme dépaysé,” Todorov explains that people who have been uprooted “learn not to confuse reality with ideals, nor culture with nature: It is not because these individuals behave differently from us that they are any less human.” Not only does this stranger in a strange land learn tolerance, but he also teaches tolerance to those he encounters. “By upsetting the habits of his host by his behavior and judgments, the outsider can help others to take the same path of detachment, of self-questioning and astonishment.”

Or not, of course. When an interviewer asked him if he had much confidence in humankind, Todorov replied: “Not really.” We are “capable of the greatest outrages” and, to boot, “are not especially intelligent.” As someone who grew up in a totalitarian society, then devoted much of his life to studying men and women facing extremes, he earned his pessimism.

But Todorov was an enlightened pessimist. Despite the repeated horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries, he held fast to the values of tolerance and moderation. His faith in moderation is perhaps tested now more than ever before, as cultural and political fissures deepen in the U.S., Britain, and across the EU, including his adopted France. He felt we did not have the luxury of refusing to choose sides—this amounted to the worst of all possible choices. But such a choice always had to be made with one’s eyes wide open, aware of one’s limitations and blind spots. “I do not claim to own the truth,” he wrote, “but I claim the right to seek it.” Too long for a bumper sticker, perhaps. But a pretty good motto as we take Todorov’s necessary, immoderate defense of moderation into a future without him.

The post Why Extreme Moderation Is the Vital Alternative to Political Polarization appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

According to the most recent Pew Research Poll on political polarization, Americans are becoming more consistently liberal or conservative in their opinions, and ideological thinking is much more aligned with political party membership than before. This means that the overlap between the two parties that existed two decades ago—when there were conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans—is gone. And so we have fewer people—both political apostates and regular, moderate folks—who can bridge the gap between the competing ideologues and partisans.

Worse yet, the hardening of ideological and partisan positions is reflected in the way we choose to live our lives. Conservatives and liberals don’t even agree on the size of the houses they want to live in, the amenities they want to live near, or the kind of neighbors they prefer. More than 75 percent of people who describe themselves as “consistently liberal” want to live in a neighborhood where houses are smaller and closer to one another and schools, stores, and restaurants are within walking distance—while 75 percent of “consistently conservative” people want the opposite (larger houses with more space and amenities within driving distance).

What do they agree on? That they don’t want to have much to do with people with whom they disagree. Which doesn’t take much effort when they live a different lifestyle in a different zip code.

Once upon a time, political beliefs were loosely linked to class and status. But they increasingly define our entire cultural identities, and vice versa. Now, as University of Maryland political scientist James G. Gimpel has argued, you can easily guess a person’s political persuasion if you know the snack foods he eats or the music she downloads. (Talk about profiling! But if there were ever a reason to swear off kale chips, perhaps this is it.) It’s depressing to think that millions and millions of unique individuals spread across millions of square miles and tracing their backgrounds from all corners of the globe can be so easily reduced to just two rather narrow camps.

The Pew survey reminded me of a rather dreary dinner party I attended a few months ago in notoriously progressive West Los Angeles. It was one of those gatherings where everyone was of a type and agreed on all things—from what issues to support to what cars to buy. I found myself wandering in thought when an astute local politician caught my eye and asked if I was sad because I was the only moderate amidst a gaggle of lefties. Caught off guard, I blurted out the truth. I’m not used to so much certainty around one table, I told her. It bored me.

Social psychologists have long known that in uncertain times people often seek certainty and belonging in ideological groups. A tumultuous economy, profound demographic shifts, and fast-changing technology can leave individuals unsure of their place in the world. So by adhering to all-encompassing, ideological worldviews, people can quickly differentiate between friends and foes in a threatening landscape.

But certainty, while comforting, is bound to have long-term costs, including mind-numbing predictability and the diminishment of the chances of actually learning anything new.

As social media becomes our primary means of receiving news and information, the Internet echo chamber becomes complete. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm prioritizes the “news” shared by your friends based in part on your “affinity” with them. Search engines tailor their findings for the individual seeker; restaurant and music apps make recommendations based on what your friends like. All this, says MIT’s Ethan Zuckerman, means that we learn about the world through self-selected people who are just like us, which only reinforces our worldviews.

Zuckerman argues passionately against this state of affairs for two reasons. One, because he believes we can’t solve serious problems by just talking to people who are just like us. And two, because he thinks homophily—the fancy sociological term for birds of a feather flock together—is making us “stupid.”

Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli agrees. He not only thinks certainty is overrated, but that uncertainty is “the first source of all knowledge.” He insists that the term “scientifically proven” is an oxymoron, and tells his colleagues that a good scientist is never certain, and always ready to shift views the moment better evidence emerges.

Sure, doubt can be debilitating. But the finality of certainty is ultimately limiting and unsatisfying, particularly in a country where more than 300 types of breakfast cereal are sold. The smartphone has already destroyed the bar bet; we don’t have to let a combination of technology and fear of the unknown and unfamiliar kill off wonder and imagination entirely.

Certainty also seems to be a rather naïve strategy for negotiating an increasingly complicated and interconnected world, one that would seem to require more flexibility, not less. In his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” that great Yankee individualist Ralph Waldo Emerson warned against such lemming-like conformism. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he wrote, “adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Is that who we want to be?

Emerson encouraged us all to retain the right to change our minds. In this day and age, such advice isn’t likely to get you elected to higher office. But if you’re a person who can’t be reduced to a set of political beliefs, someone who relishes uncertainty and loves questions even more than answers—I’m hoping you’ll save a seat for me at the dinner party. You might even entertain me through dessert.

The post Are Politics Making Americans Boring? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

This analysis assumes that American politics has an obvious center, in which both sensible policy positions and swing voters may be found. But the more you look for this legendary center, the harder it is to find.

I plead guilty for having succumbed to the lure of the “center.” In 2001, I co-authored with Ted Halstead The Radical Center, a book that called centrism a “shallow mantra in recent American politics” but attempted to reinvigorate it with use of “the word radical—in keeping with its Latin derivation from ‘radix,’ or ‘root’—to emphasize that we are interested not in tinkering at the margin of our inherited public, private, and communal institutions but rather in promoting, when necessary, a wholesale revamping of their component parts.” We proposed a combination of expanded public funding in many areas with greater individual choice—for example, nationalizing much of K-12 finance in return for a degree of school choice. However, our attempt to provide the term “radical center” with substance in the form of a modernized version of the New Deal failed to make the term take hold in popular usage.

If the political center means nothing more than the mathematical midpoint between the policy positions of Democrats and Republicans, then it is a fluid concept, like the center of gravity of the U.S. population, which has moved from Kent County, Maryland in 1790 to Texas County, Missouri, in 2010. This kind of notional “center” does not reflect any particular constituency or worldview. As political scientist Jacob Hacker and others have documented, the Republican party has moved far to the right in the last generation, whereas Democratic positions on most issues have remained largely stable. If “the center” is the midpoint between the parties, then the center in 2013 must be well to the right of where it was in 1993, just to keep up with the radicalism of Tea Party conservatives.

Attempts have been made to supply the political center with actual content, as a third position in American politics between conservatism and liberalism. The problem is that there are two “centers” in American politics, as John Judis pointed out back in a 1995 article for The New Republic entitled “Off Center.”

One of these two “centers,” identified in the 1970s by the sociologist Donald Warren, is made up of “middle American radicals.” These are mostly white working-class radicals, including many so-called “Reagan Democrats” who supported New Deal liberal economic policies like Social Security and Medicare but were alienated from the Democratic party by its support for civil rights and cultural liberalism.

Judis contrasted this working-class “radical center” with the “moderate middle,” which combines liberalism on social issues with center-right views on economics. It is found chiefly among affluent professionals, managers, and investors. In recent years this “moderate middle” has been called “liberaltarianism.”

Because they were not conventional liberals or conventional conservatives, members of both groups were drawn to Ross Perot’s Reform Party movement in the 1990s. But because the views of downscale middle American radicals and upscale “liberaltarians” are diametrically opposite, the groups discovered that they shared nothing other than alienation from the two major parties. The Reform party was effectively destroyed by the clash between its populist wing, headed by Patrick Buchanan, and a socially liberal, small-government wing headed by former Colorado governor Richard Lamm.

To complicate matters further, in the 1990s, some sought to coopt “centrism” to describe a more modern version of the center-left. In 1998 the British academic Tony Giddens used “radical center” to describe the “Third Way” of Clinton-Blair neoliberalism. “The overall aim of third way politics should be to help citizens pilot their way through the major revolutions of our time: globalization, transformations in personal life, and our relationship to nature,” Giddens wrote in his book Third Way. “Our problems and possibilities are not within the reach of the left/right scheme.”

Speaking for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) wing of American liberalism in 1996, Al From and Will Marshall in 1996 made it clear that the Third Way was more about reinventing the center-left for a new age than about centrism for its own sake. “The industrial order of the 20th century, with its great concentrations of economic and political power, is giving way to a new society shaped by the centrifugal forces of the Information Age,” they wrote for the Democratic Leadership Council. “America needs a third choice that replaces the left’s reflexive defense of the bureaucratic status quo and counters the right’s destructive bid to simply dismantle government.”

In recent years, the class-based gap between the two “centers” of politics and public opinion has become even more pronounced. Mainstream journalists and commentators—many of them members of the one percent, by income—treat “the center” unreflexively as what Judis called “the moderate middle” or upscale centrism: liberal on gay rights and immigration, conservative on taxes and social spending.

This kind of “centrism” might best described as “one percentrism,” because it has little support among the other 99 percent of Americans. For example, when it comes to Social Security, eight in 10 Americans prefer to raise taxes to pay for Social Security rather than cut benefits. Support for cutting Social Security is concentrated among the rich.

In a recent study, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” social scientists Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright found that the top one percent of wealth-holders in the U.S. “are much more conservative than the American public as a whole with respect to important policies concerning taxation, economic regulation, and especially social welfare programs.” Despite decades of efforts by billionaire conservative Peter G. Peterson and others in favor of deficit/debt reduction, the divide between elite and majority opinion is particularly striking when it comes to the federal deficit and the national debt, with 87 percent of the rich citing it as a “very important” problem while only 7 percent of the general public thought it was important when compared to more pressing issues like jobs and the weak economy. It is a testament to the distortion of American democracy by the power of rich donors that when majority views contrast with those of the rich, American politicians of both parties tend to side with the rich who provide their donations rather than the many who provide their votes.

Is the political center, then, a will-o-the-wisp, or mirage, that disappears when you approach it? In the past generation, the term “radical center” has been used to describe socially conservative, economically liberal populism; its opposite, socially liberal, economically conservative libertarianism; and the “Third Way” neoliberalism associated with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the 1990s. A term so elastic is useless and ought to be abandoned. The related term “centrism” also has little staying power or substance—when compared to progressivism, conservatism, libertarianism, or socialism. In the words of William Butler Yeats, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.”

The post Call Off the Silly Hunt For ‘Centrism’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

“It’s a hell of a challenge to create a cohesive community that has ideological diversity,” said Jonathan Haidt, winner of the 2013 Zócalo Book Prize for The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. “Race is easy. Ideology is hard.” After accepting his award in front of a full house at MOCA Grand Avenue, Haidt, a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business, asked why it’s so hard for us to live together in and govern today’s America—a country he thinks is divided most deeply not by race or economics or geography but by ideology.

Haidt said that talking and getting people used to one another is often a good way to bridge divides and help people realize their shared values. But when it comes to ideology, the opposite is true. People on the right and left “see the world in fundamentally different ways.” According to the philosopher Thomas Sowell, if you see the ideal world as “unconstrained,” you think human nature is malleable and can be improved and even perfected. If you see the ideal world as “constrained,” you think that people need limits in order to cooperate well and thrive. The left sees the ideal world as unconstrained; the right sees the ideal world as constrained.

These are very different views of human nature, said Haidt—and it means people’s visions of the ideal community are diametrically opposed. So how does this play out in our democracy? Haidt drew on three principles of moral psychology to explain.

The first principle is that “intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second.” Haidt explained that when we’re presented with a fact we want to believe in, we ask ourselves, “‘Can I believe it?’” If the answer is yes, we find just one piece of evidence to support it, and we believe. If, on the other hand, we don’t want to believe in that fact, we ask ourselves, “‘Must I believe it?’” Then, we find just one piece of evidence against it, and we disbelieve. If people see what they want to see, and work to reach the conclusion they want to reach, asked Haidt, is it any wonder that scientific studies rarely change people’s minds? Technology has made it even more difficult for scientists to make their case in the court of public opinion, said Haidt: “Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will take you to the study you need.” Pointing to a contentious contemporary question, he asked, “Can gun control end shootings?” There’s no conclusive proof on either side, so both sides see what they want to see.

The second principle is that “there’s more to morality than harm and fairness.” Our morality is a balancing act among a number of different foundations, including care versus harm, liberty versus oppression, and authority versus subversion. People on both the right and left want fairness and liberty, said Haidt—but they want it in different balances. Parsing the immigration reform debate in the Senate, he quoted Democrat Patrick Leahy saying, “‘We need an immigration system that lives up to American values, one that allows families to be reunited and safe.’” Then he quoted Republican Chuck Grassley saying, “‘We have a duty to protect the borders and the sovereignty of this country.’”

Liberals want to knock down barriers in order to help people get along, said Haidt, while conservatives are more parochial—they’re trying to increase moral capital within a community in order to get it to cooperate well.

The third and final principle is that “morality binds and blinds.” Humans are the only species that has evolved to live in cooperative communities, with the exception of creatures like bees, who don’t reproduce except for their queen. How did we go, in a couple thousand years, from being hunter-gatherers to living in sophisticated communities? “We’re really good at making something sacred and circling around it,” said Haidt. “This is why flags are so important in war. It’s not just a piece of cloth. It’s the sacred emblem that allows people to risk their lives for each other.” We separate the world into good and evil, which allows us to come together around a common cause—and which also is how polarization happens. And polarization is increasing in America, nowhere more radically than in Congress, where for the first time in history, the liberals are all in one party and the conservatives are in another. We’ve lost coalitions based on other affinities, like jobs or geography, and as a result we’ve lost cooperation across party lines.

That’s why projects like Zócalo, which brings people together to hash out tough questions, are important, said Haidt, although he averred that hashing out is not in itself conducive bridging divides (often the opposite). “We need to figure out how to deal with this kind of diversity, which is very different from other kinds of diversity,” he said. “It’s a difficult problem, and we haven’t found good ways to solve it.”

The best solution is to find a common enemy, but that’s difficult to do when you’re so fundamentally divided. The left is rallying around global warming, so the right is rejecting it; the right is rallying around the sociological decline of America—especially the decline of marriage—so the left is rejecting it.

What, asked Haidt, would happen if both sides said, “‘I’m going to stick with my cause, but I’m willing to consider yours’”?

It just might be a start. So while diverse communities might never be as cohesive as uniform groups, they might be able to figure out a way to work together and move toward truth.

The post Race Is Easy. Ideology Is Hard. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I asked, “Well, how many Republicans do you have there in your diverse neighborhood?”

“Oh,” he sputtered, “there aren’t any Republicans!”

We cluck about our growing “diversity”—I often see multi-colored “Celebrate Diversity” bumper stickers here in hip Austin, Texas—but that’s not really the way most of us live. Yes, many neighborhoods have greater ethnic diversity than ever–and live more harmoniously with such diversity than ever–as the gentleman from Philadelphia seemed to suggest. But this demographic diversity masks an increasing homogeneity of belief within the communities in which we live.

There are two things going on. Between places across the country–Manhattan and Harlan County, Kentucky, for instance–we are differing more than ever in how we act, think, and vote. But within the places where we live, there is increasing conformity in how we act, think, and vote.

It’s this combination–of increasing conformity within our immediate surroundings and increasing inequality in education, income, and even life expectancy between different regions of the country–that is making it harder for states, and the nation, to function.

Political segregation

Statistician Robert Cushing and I have written a lot about the political segregation that is taking place in the country. Over the past three decades, most places, as measured by voting in presidential elections, have become increasingly Republican or Democratic. Half the nation now lives in a county where, in elections that are very close nationally, the local results are landslides. This is true even though we are citizens of a country that is split down the middle politically. The country has a wider range of political beliefs than it used to have–far different from the “tweedle dum, tweedle dee” political party conformity of the 1950s and early ’60s–but, again, these differences are between, not within, communities.

You can see the spread of politically homogenous communities since 1976 in the series of maps below.

Segregating by way of life

Political segregation, however, is just one way in which the country is separating. Educational segregation and economic segregation are arguably even more severe. Bob Cushing and I began our work together trying to discover why some places in the United States were booming while others were inert. We found what is now a four-decade long process of sorting. Some of the most striking statistics can be found in education.

In 1970, college educated adults were relatively evenly distributed across the country. You can see in the chart above that, 40 years ago, in the top 25 percent of counties by education, 16 percent of adults had at least a college degree. In the bottom 25 percent of counties by education, six percent of adults had a college degree. There was only a 10-point difference between top and bottom. Over the next 40 years, however, educated people congregated in some places and not in others. By 2010, the percentage gap in college degrees between the top and bottom quartile had widened to 26 points. Educationally, the nation is segregating.

The clustering of educated people in some places and not in others has had all kinds of other effects. Economies diverged. Patent applications clustered. Cultures began to differentiate. One of the more interesting experiments Bob Cushing conducted involved a comparison of data on technology and patents with data on how people lived.

Cushing examined the results from the 21 cities highest in technology production and patents with results from the 138 cities that had the lowest patent production and tech prowess. His findings were striking: The differences in economy were reflected in lifestyle.

In the 21 high-tech cities, people said they were more likely to “try anything once.” They were more interested in other cultures. Church and club memberships were decreasing. People were more optimistic and more likely to engage in activities on their own. In the 138 low-tech cities, people were more likely to attend church and engage in community projects. People were more supportive of traditional authority. People were more family oriented.

These social differences began showing up in politics. In 1980, the 21 high-tech cities voted much like the rest of the nation. But by 2000, these cities had become staunchly Democratic. Al Gore led George W. Bush nationally by about half a million votes. In the 21 high tech cities, Gore beat Bush by 5.3 million votes.

In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by more than 3 million votes. He lost to Kerry in the “try anything once” tech cities by more than 5 million votes.

Longevity, families, suicides, speech …

Life expectancy rose across the U.S. until the late 1970s. In the 1980s, health care researchers began to notice a reversal, but only in certain places. From 1999 to 2009, the average lifespan of women in more than 550 American counties declined–even as longevity in the rest of the country continued to increase.

Lifespan was only one sign of a bigger change. In the 1970s, rural and urban places had similar rates of suicide and attempted suicide. By the late 1990s, rates of suicide were 54 percent higher in rural areas than in U.S. cities. Linguists reported that regional accents have been strengthening as we polarized in the way we talked. Family formation patterns were also diverging.

And these differences now show up in the way we vote.

Vanderbilt political scientist Marc Hetherington tells us that the greater the approval of corporal punishment for children in a state, the higher the vote is for the Republican presidential candidate. Demographer Ron Lesthaeghe reports that the more family formation patterns in an American community resemble those in Denmark (women marrying later, if at all; more single parents; etc.), the greater the vote in that community is for the Democratic candidate. That relationship between Danish-style family behavior and the Democrats strengthened from 2004 to 2008.

American communities are becoming more homogenous in the way people live, learn, speak, die, work, think, act, and vote–and communities are becoming more different from one another in exactly the same ways.

Social and religious sorting

Social organizations are sorting in much the same way. Churches cater to political and social points of view. Beginning in the 1970s, seminaries began teaching the “homogenous unit principle” of church membership–the more homogenous the congregation (the more its members had in common when it came to tastes in food and music, types of clothing, and political attitudes), the more likely it was to grow. News media fill political niches. Broad-based civic organizations (Elks, Lions, Rebekahs, Optimists) have dried up, replaced by groups with particular political or social points of view (Sierra Club, Burning Man, the Federalist Society).

In 1956, the economist Charles Tiebout theorized that people would “vote with their feet” when it came to finding the proper mix between taxes and services. Tiebout predicted that this economic sorting would also have a social component. He wrote: “Not only is the consumer-voter concerned with economic patterns, but he desires, for example, to associate with ‘nice people.’”

And that is what’s happened. “Do people fundamentally end up going to live where people who look like them live?” asked G. Evans Witt, CEO of Princeton Survey Research Associated, rhetorically, in an interview. “Yes, pretty much. But it’s not look. It’s act like them, think like them.” We also worship, volunteer, and get our information from the like-minded.

Our homogenous lives offer reassurance and comfort–and blind us to how people live and think just a few miles away. Consequently, we have less understanding of or sympathy for our fellow citizens.

Nebraska political scientist Elizabeth Theiss-Morse told me of focus groups she held in Omaha. “People said many times, ‘Eighty percent of us agree, we all want the same thing. It’s those 20 percent who are just a bunch of extremists out there.’ It didn’t matter what their political views were. They really saw it as us against this fringe. The American people versus them, the fringe.”

In Omaha, folks agreed on where the fringe lived, Theiss-Morse recalled: “Those people in California are really weird.”

The fringe now live everywhere–in California or Wyoming or New York City or West Virginia. Or to be more precise, wherever we don’t.

Bill Bishop, a fellow at Arizona State University’s Center for Social Cohesion, is co-author, with Robert Cushing, of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart; and he is co-editor of The Daily Yonder, a web publication that covers rural America.

*Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. Maps and chart courtesy of Bill Bishop.

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